Community Based Correctional Program - Research Proposal Example

Community based correctional program Community based correctional programs are essential for the wellbeing of the society, since it helps in reducing the budgets used for state correctional programs (Morral, McCaffrey and Ridgeway, 2004). This is a proposal for funding for a community based correctional program that is aimed at offenders with a chemical abuse problem. The community correctional program will be aimed at serving the state correctional program who are chemically dependent, which will be done by providing full treatment services for the offenders for the time in which they are in the program. The program is also aimed at assessing the behavioral and psychological traits of individuals in the program, which lead them to participate in chemical abuse. Project Objectives 1. The first objective of the program is to provide primary counseling services for the individuals who have a chemical abuse problem (Marlowe, 2010). This objective will also focus on individualized treatment of the individuals, coupled with constant monitoring and assessment of the offenders. 2. Provide the clients in the program with a highly specialized treatment service for the period in which they are in the program. This will include a completely structured treatment and therapeutic treatment service aimed at identifying and reducing the root of the chemical abuse problem (CCP, 2012). 3. Provide clients with effective group therapy and individual sessions with professional counselors (CCP, 2012). 4. Provide a seminar for educational therapy for the clients, which will help them in leading productive lives after the correctional plan (CCP, 2012). 5. Provide other services that help in improving the chemical and psychological health of the client. These services include anger management, parenting skills, cultural, gender sensitivity, and alcoholic control (CCP, 2012). 6. Provide clients with a place for practicing their religious affiliation, which is deemed to help in the psychological growth of the client (CCP, 2012). 7. Provide a basis for including the family in the treatment process, including provision for constant visitation and family therapy (CCP, 2012). Proposed Target Group Since the program is meant to compliment the services of the state in the provision of rehabilitation services, the main clientele served by the program will be individuals who violate their paroles to a level that necessitates their return to prison (Lipton, 1999). These individuals will be mainly composed of violating parolees who are deemed to have a chemical abuse nature and must undergo drug rehabilitation. The second groups to be served by the program include offenders currently undergoing incarceration at state prisons, but are mandated by the regulators and prison boards to undergo chemical rehabilitation (Lipton, 1999). These offenders will be taken out of their prisons and kept in the program facilities. Other clients will be the offenders who are ordered by respective courts to serve chemical dependency programs prior to their release form state and government prison services (Lipton, 1999). This group of clients will also include offenders who are currently participating in release programs from respective incarceration centers but violate chemical abuse regulations. This is meant to ensure that the state releases chemical-free individuals to the public after incarceration. The last group of clients will be clients who are referred to the center by United States Probation officials based on their assessment of the offenders’ chemical dependency (Lipton, 1999). The selection process for the clients mentioned above will include an assessment of the client’s previous offences. This will be done to ensure that the clients in the center are not known sexual offenders or have histories of violent crimes. The other selection progress is the determination of the mental health of the clients in the program, since the program will not accept any mentally ill patients. As a way of ensuring community safety, the offenders will be kept in highly secured environments to ensure that they do not mingle with the public or the community. The offenders will be kept in the center for a maximum of one year or until their chemical dependency problem is deemed eradicated. This will ensure that the turnover of the center is kept current, and serve as many clients as possible. Proposed Treatment Strategy The treatment strategy for the program will be aimed at four main programs that will treat the aspects of the program mentioned in the theoretical framework above. The first step of the treatment process will be a readiness intervention program (Simpson, 2012), which assesses the willingness of the individual to participate in the community based intervention program. The readiness intervention will be an analysis of the patient, the severity of the chemical abuse and the readiness of the patient to undergo the rehabilitation process. The main part of the treatment model will include four aspects, which are behavioral intervention, social skills and support, cognitive intervention and recovery skills training (Simpson, 2012). Behavioral intervention is aimed at assessing the behavioral aspects of an individual that lead the patient to chemical abuse, after which the counselors will try to introduce a behavioral change aspect of treatment. This will be aimed at reducing the environmental and behavioral factors that lead a client to chemical and drug abuse. The second part of the program, social skills and support, is aimed at assessing the social environment that leads the clients to engage in chemical abuse (Simpson, 2012). This part of the treatment process will provide new social skills, support programs to the client, and help them change their social environment. The cognitive intervention part of the program is perhaps the most important part of the treatment process, since it is focused at changing the psychological outlook of the client. The last part of this section of the treatment program is recovery skills training, which is aimed at improving the retention rate for the clientele. This section will be divided into a three-part period, where the first part is early engagement for the client, followed by early recovery and finalized by a retention or transition program (Simpson, 2012). The early engagement part will be focused on serious program participation and the development of a therapeutic relationship with the counselors in the program. This will be supplemented by the change process, aimed at two major aspects, the behavioral and psychosocial change in the client. This is perhaps the most important part of the correction program since it lays groundwork for the retention program for the client. The last part of the treatment process is aimed at two main factors, which are the social support services and the personal health services provided to the client (Kinlock, O'Grady and Hanlon, 2003). After the retention process is deemed complete, the client will be subjected to social support networks that are aimed at the chemical abuse problem, the criminal tendencies and the social relations in which the client engages. This post-treatment service is done to ensure that the client does not revert to the substance abuse problem. Site Selection The site selection process for the correctional program will be done with two main objectives, the first being the security of the community and the clients, and the second being a conducive environment for rehabilitation. The site for the community correctional program will have to be in a place well away from the community, which will ensure that the community is kept safe from the inmates. The site will also have to be a secure place that can be guarded around the clock to ensure that the clients do not get an opportunity to escape into the community. This will be done by finding a secluded are that can be easily secured. Since the clients are in rehabilitation for chemical abuse, the site for the correctional program will also have to be away from major cities or town areas. This will be done to ensure that there is no undue influence on the rehabilitation process, which can occur if the clients are exposed to a busy city life. The main problem that will affect the community correctional program is acceptance by the community in which the center is based, since the community will be averse to the inclusion of potentially dangerous individuals in their society. This resistance to the community correctional center will be overcome by ensuring that the community is well informed of the security accorded to the center and the potential benefits of the program to the whole community. This will be done by conducting informational tours and seminars in the community and assurance of the safety of the correctional center. Staff Selection, Training, Credentials and Orientation As already mentioned, the main function of the project being envisioned is to rehabilitate members from chemical and substance abuse. This means that the main staff in the program will be counselors and trained medical personnel who will undertake the project of rehabilitating the clients. The main selection process will involve a review of the previous work of the professionals being interview, which will be followed by matching the requirements against the qualifications. Job descriptions will be created for every individual work and then applications invited for the different posts. The main job descriptions will be the psychiatrists, counselors, researchers, security guards, wardens and financial officers. The work of each of these individuals will be assessed based on the success of each client who passes through the community correction program. Organization Chart The overall project coordinator will be tasked with the job of overseeing the whole project and coordinating the efforts of every member of staff in the community correction center for clients with chemical dependence, while the project finance and operations controller will have the job of overseeing budgetary control and ensuring that every department is financially independent. The finance and operations controller oversees the work of the head of security, who has the task of ensuring that the clients are kept safely and do not pose a security risk to the community. The finance and operations controller also oversees the work of all the people charged with rehabilitating the clients, who include the counselors and psychiatrists. The volunteers, counselors and analysts are tasked with finding new methods of curing the clients and preparing new methods of rehabilitation, counseling the clients and providing other services needed at the center. Budget The initial budget for the program for the first year of operations will be inflated since the project will include new constructions and the costs of finding new staff for every department. However, in the second year, the budget will reduce since most of the costs will have been covered, and from the third year onwards, the budget is expected to stabilize. The following table shows the expected budget for the first three years. Community Corrections Program Estimated Budget for Operations First Year Second Year Third Year Expected Number of Clients 10 15 20 Revenue Per Client $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 Total Revenue $250,000 $375,000 $500,000 Building Costs $200,000 $80,000 $10,000 Staff selection and Training costs $120,000 $102,000 $98,000 Regulatory Approval costs $15,000 $12,000 $9,600 Administration Costs $15,000 $12,000 $9,600 Maintenance Costs $8,000 $6,400 $5,120 Miscellaneous Costs $30,000 $25,000 $18,000 Total Costs $388,000 $237,400 $150,320 Net Income ($138,000) $137,600 $349,680 The budget shown above is a rough state of the costs and revenues expected for the first three years of operations. The building costs in the first year are high since the project will be new and the program needs to be conducted in a safely constructed environment. The staff selection and training costs will also be high since the project will need to find new staff for the running of the project. However, the building and staffing costs will reduce in the second, third years since most posts will have been covered, and the project will have employed enough employees. However, the development of the project center and staffing needs will continue for the first five years of operations as the community center grows and the client base continues to grow. This factor accounts for the continuing budgeting for staffing and building after the first year of operations. The clients catered for by the project will expected to pay since the project will not be expected to sustain itself. For the clients referred by the state and government, their costs will be paid for by the referring authority. For the first year, the community correction center is expected to cater for up to 10 clients, which will increase to full capacity of 20 clients in the second and third years of operations. The regulatory approval costs include the costs needed to obtain building approvals and to run a correction program in the area, which will reduce by 20% every year for the first 5 years. The administration and maintenance costs will include the costs needed to cater for every client in the program and the costs needed in training and rehabilitating them. These include the costs for paying the personnel running the program and the costs associated with the job that they do in rehabilitating the clients. As can be seen from the above budget, the center will make profits from the second year of operations, since the first year is covered with huge outlays of investment. Project Management As already stated, the average stay for a client in the program is one year, therefore, the project timeline will be centered around the year that the inmate stays with the program. The timeline for the project will be centered on the model for treatment that was described in the formative stage of this paper. Timeline The main part of the project timeline will be the behavioral intervention part, the social skills, support, and the cognitive intervention for the client. This part of the project will take the biggest part of the timeline since the clients will be rehabilitated at this stage. The first stage will be an introductory part and the last stage will be the preparation for the clients to go out into the society. Evaluation The program will be evaluated based on the evident growth of the client in terms of chemical abuse. According to research, a patient who has undergone a chemical rehabilitation is less likely to engage in criminal activity after the rehabilitation is complete (Smiley-McDonald and Leukefeld, 2005). Therefore, the clients will be monitored after their release from the program to ascertain their improvement in terms of chemical and substance abuse. The program will also be evaluated based on group therapy success, which will include a success in anger management programs, family therapy and group socialization (Kimberly, Christopher and Wayne, 2012). After the clients have left the center, their social interactions will be monitored, and if they display signs of improvement in terms of chemical abuse, the project will deemed a success (Hiller, Knight, Saum and Simpson, 2006). The other evaluation technique for the program is the completion rate, where the program is deemed a success if more than 50% of the clients finish the program and are deemed healed. The evaluation will also be based on the group therapy, where the project is evaluated in terms of the number of clients who finish the treatment from particular groups. References Chanhatasilpa, C., MacKenzie, D., and Hickman, L. (2000). The effectiveness of community-based programs for chemically dependent offenders: A review and assessment of the research. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, Vol. 19(4). Pp. 383-393. Connections Correction Program (CCP). (2012). Community, Counseling and Correctional Services. Retrieved on April 29, 2012 from: Hiller, M., Knight, K., Saum, C., and Simpson, D. (2006). Social Functioning, Treatment Dropout, and Recidivism of Probationers Mandated to a Modified Therapeutic Community. Criminal Justice and Behavior Vol. 33. Pp. 738-759. Kimberly, H., Christopher, S., and Wayne, W. (2012). Individual-Level Predictors of Community Aftercare Completion. The Prison Journal, Vol. 92. Pp. 106-124. Kinlock, T., O'Grady, K., and Hanlon, T. (2003). The Effects of Drug Treatment on Institutional Behavior. The Prison Journal, Vol. 83. Pp. 257-276. Lipton, D. (1999). A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effectiveness of Corrections-Based Treatments for Drug Abuse. The Prison Journal, Vol. 79(4). Pp. 384-410. Marlowe, D. (2011). Evidence-Based Policies and Practices for Drug-Involved Offenders. The Prison Journal, Vol. 91. Pp. 27S-47S. Morral, R., McCaffrey, F., and Ridgeway, G. (2004). Effectiveness of Community-Based Treatment for Substance-Abusing Adolescents: 12-Month Outcomes of Youths Entering Phoenix Academy or Alternative Probation Dispositions. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 18(3). Pp. 257-268. Smiley-McDonald, H., and Leukefeld, C. (2005). Incarcerated Clients’ Perceptions of Therapeutic Change in Substance Abuse Treatment: A 4-Year Case Study. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. Vol. 49. Pp. 574-589. Simpson, D. (2012). Treatment Process. Institute of Behavioral Research, Texas Christian University. Retrieved on April 29, 2012 from: Read More